Chapter 3

Twenty kilometers away, in front of the independent ventilation outlet on the top floor of the shelter—

Irene stood there with her eyes closed, breathing in greedily. The artificial cold air blowing out through the thick metal grille swept away every trace of the seventy-degree heat still clinging to her body. Even every strand of her hair seemed to relax.

“You made an incredibly smart choice, baby.”

Kane wrapped an arm around her waist from behind. In his hand was a glass of absurdly luxurious synthetic red wine—with ice in it. The cubes clinked sharply against the glass. His tone carried the satisfaction of someone looking down from above.

Irene opened her eyes, turned, and kissed his cheek hard. She smiled, charming and smug.

“As long as I get to stay with you, I’ll do anything. As for that piece of trash…” She looked down at the sun-blasted, warped red ruins below, not a trace of guilt in her eyes. “He’s probably dried into jerky by now.”

To her, those days barely clinging to life in the underground freezer—and the man who used his life to cool her—had already been thrown away like that lump of ice.

“Urgh—”

Acid from my stomach mixed with thick blood-foam and spilled from my mouth onto the burning concrete. It hissed and turned instantly into stinging vapor.

I had lain alone in this cold-storage room—now flooded by the backwash of heat—for a full forty-eight hours.

Not a drop of water. Not a bite of food.

And with my ability core completely shattered, this body was collapsing from the inside out.

High fever. Vomiting. Every muscle in my body convulsing as if invisible blades were slicing through them one strip at a time. The remnants of my ability, now out of control, formed a brittle shell of frost over my skin—only for the seventy-degree heat to instantly turn it to boiling water and scald my flesh raw.

Freeze. Melt.

Freeze again. Melt again.

I was like a slab of rotten meat hammered over and over on an anvil, torn between the abyss of extreme cold and extreme heat. Even the air entering my lungs smelled like my own flesh scorching.

But on the second night, the deadliest danger found me.

Even inside this giant oven, my body temperature plummeted below twenty degrees.

Severe hypothermia wrapped a freezing hand around my throat.

My vision started breaking apart.

The peeling gray paint on the ceiling twisted through double images—until it turned into half a melting vanilla ice cream cone.

“Try some?”

In the hallucination, Irene smiled with her eyes curved like crescents and held it to my lips. That had been before the inferno came. Before the world turned into a branding iron. Back then, she’d cry in my arms if a paper edge nicked her finger.

Was I remembering that now because I missed her?

No.

Feeling the slowing heartbeat in my chest, I understood with absolute clarity—

I was laughing.

Laughing at the idiot I’d been, the one who truly believed that if you gave enough sincerity, you’d be repaid with loyalty.

I had been that stupid.

And then, at the exact moment my heartbeat weakened to the brink of stopping—

Creeeak… crack!

Above me, in the charred ventilation duct, came a horrible metallic tearing sound.

That was not a sound a human could make.

Then—thud!

Three mutated scarlet beetles, each over half a meter long, crashed onto the concrete floor, carrying with them a wave of scorching, rotten heat.

In this seventy-degree boiling world, ordinary organic life had already been wiped out. Creatures like these—mutated under extreme thermal radiation—were covered in heat-resistant crimson armor and fed specifically on the flesh and ability cores of mutated humans.

The antennae on their heads quivered wildly. They instantly caught the scent of the blood I’d coughed up—and even more accurately, the last leaking energy from the dying core in my chest.

Hiss—

All three let out greedy shrieks, their blade-like legs screeching over the floor as they lunged at me like starving wolves.

I couldn’t move even a finger.

I could only watch as the biggest one crawled onto my chest.

The heavy, burning pressure nearly crushed my ribs on the spot.

Its barbed mouthparts opened, and a drop of thick acid landed on my collarbone.

Sssst—

The acid burned through flesh instantly, right down to the membrane over the bone, sending up a sharp thread of white smoke.

Agony tore at my nerves, but my body lay there like a stone coffin, unable to resist in the slightest.

Its enormous fangs, like steel saws, moved slowly closer—aiming for my left chest.

It was going to dig me open alive, chew my heart apart, and eat the shattered core.

The shadow of death became solid horror in that instant and wrapped around my throat.

The fangs pierced my skin.

Ripped through muscle.

And the freezing tips had already touched the cracked, ruined core—

Then, one-thousandth of a second before those poisoned fangs could crush my heart completely—

Click.

Deep inside my chest, there came a strange crisp sound—like gears locking perfectly into place.

And then—

A terrifying ice-blue burst of light exploded straight out of my chest, like an arctic storm compressed for ten thousand years, piercing the entire black freezer room in an instant.